Navigate:

May 06, 2008

Categories:

I've been out on the road with Clinton for the past few days, during which she was perhaps the sharpest she's been in her political career. Forceful, clear, connecting intensely with her crowds, utterly at ease with her message.

Tonight, that energy has really, strikingly vanished.

Bill, behind her, is somber too. And she's promised, "no matter what happens," to work to pull the party together.

This is Hillary Clinton.
She bows to no one.
She will take down the party for her own personal and political ambition.
She will come out tomorrow with anew plan, a new strategy, with Obama in her sights...
She isn't going anywhere.

Well it looks like NC will utterly wipe out her gains in PA. With Indiana so close it won't provide her with a popular vote gain that is significant. She can't win the delegate fight and she can't win the popular vote fight. Why is she staying around. This blow hard is nausiating.

awwww...so cute. sorry benny boy. hopefully you can go through it. they say the first part acknowledging that you're in denial with your love for the clintons. there's still hope. im all teary-eyed now. maybe i should go.

That's because even if she does squeak out a win, she will not get the credit - Limbaugh will. His "operation chaos" numbers equal about her possible win. A win is not a win for her and the MSM is carrying the story w/numbers to back it up.

We need a candidate who can at least count. Hillary has proven she can't do that. She lost tonight big time. All her pandering to take North Carolina failed and the good guys won even in the face of an unprecended onslaught of evil.

Her speech tonight really confirms in my mind that she is willing to do whatever it takes to get this nomination. It is clear tonight that Obama will be the nominee, and her insistence that "really, we are winning" is baloney. She has no clear path to the nomination, so she is only hurting the Democrats' chance in November.

"B*tch may be the new black, but black is the new PRESIDENT, b*tch." Time to book yourself for some nice, relaxing spa treatments and a week on a sunny beach, Hill, honey. You gave it your best shot, but it turns out you're not Annie Oakley after all. That's okay. You'll always have those halcyon days of the 90s, and you'll always have New York to go home to. Right?

Defeat?!!! Oh puleeze. Cant you people stop mimicking what the experts (who also like Ben here have no - none - zero -zip experience in natl politics themselves) on the cable news shows say?
Bill Schneider - one of the dumbest political "analyst" guys Ive ever met by the way - says that NC was good for Obama because he got 1/3 of the white vote.
Think about that for a minute and remember we are talking about red state DEMOCRATS here....
Lord.
April 10th Obama himself said that since PA was strong for Hillary and NC was strong for Obama - it would be Indiana that would be the TIEBREAKER... Remember he had been leading in the polls there since Feb5... This was another bad loss for Obama.
Now...will Obama do the honorable thing and withdraw - for the Good of the Party or is he gonna continue to divide this Party - and make us play this out till the inevitable end? (which will mean seating FL and MI btw) Hmm

It's time for party donors to tell her to go to hell. She is tearing the party apart for no good reason now. She is whipped. There are no big states left and she lost the big one. Obama got further ahead.

After the combined Indiana and North Carolina contests, Hillary finds herself farther behind in both the popular vote and the delegate count. The only path to the nomination now for her is to swiftboat the superdelegates. And it isn't going to happen, the supers aren't that stupid.

It's time for Al Gore and a few real party leaders to step in and end this madness. If they start pulling more of the smear and obliterate stuff now the history written about her and Bill will be as dark as it can be.

I'm betting that, as part of the "someone has to tell her to drop out" strategy, today is the first day since Patti Doyle was fired that her campaign has told her the truth about her finances. She's starting to realize that she's in debt, and going to have to pay back the "general-only" funds which she's put IOUs on. Sad day.

I do think she's angling for VP. I think Obama would really rather get many of her positives without her distractions by picking Sebelius. That day will wreck Hillary. I'll be sympathetic, but after the last two months, Hillary just can't be trusted to run within the kind of campaign Obama wants to run.

Her pacing is off. Timing is off.
And West Virginia is slipped into the Republican column? What, did Robert Byrd die?
But really, the best moment of the evening so far has been Donna Brazile telling that dipstick Republican pseudo-strategist that superdelegates aren't the elitists of the party. They are committed party activists. They are the ones who empty the trash and wash the floors. I guess the little twerp, uh, forgot that she was sitting next to a superdelegate in Donna Brazile. Honestly, I can't remember this idiotic twit's name, and God forbid there's any useful information about who's doing commentary on CNN's site, so I can't tell who she is, but it made for great teevee.
Ben, you should get that clip up, instead of doing the Department of the departments of the departments thing.

I dislike Hillary about as much as anyone can. However, Obama showed grace and elegance in his victory and that's why we voted for him. As his supporters, we shouldn't be gloating..too much...we'll still need everyone in November.

Thank you very much. And Bill worked his butt off in North Carolina and they came up with nothing because what they got in IN is basically nothing if they will try to be honest with themselves - - they came up with zero by giving it everything they had - - seems like that would tell them something.

Lanny Davis is still spinning and lying about how much money they got after PA. They can't prove it and are holding back the report. All spin. Only spin. He actually called North Carolina a big win for Hillary. He is as nutso as her.

I've never posted on this site before, but reading the above comments prompted me to sign on and say: why is that so many Obama supporters sound like such lousy sons of *****es, just really junkyard dog, mean lousy sons of *****es. Good luck to your candidate if he makes it to November. He's going to need it b/c he's going to be missing a whole lot of votes. The ones you've lost him with your unbelievable ugliness.

I have always enjoyed your posts Ben. I want you to know that if you have always supported Mrs. Clinton I am sorry that she did not win everything. We need to try to come together. I hope everyone on this blog will do the same. This is a fun place to share our thoughts.
I know we all can try to work together.
Believe in the American people again

Hill and Bill are looking very somber and talking about the good of the party because they are going to implement the "Nuclear Option." The Clintons do not enjoy using such destructive means, but Obama and his True Believer fans are interfering with their plan that Hillary should be President. Any means to this end is fair. Its a sign of how hard Hillary will fight. She is on the side of the real people of this country. Hillary must the the next President and she will be.

Hillary may be muted, but it's nothing compared with Ben's utter silence on the change in Obama's prospects.
Maybe a lovely post speculating on what Obama might have to offer Hillary in order to get her to climb down, should the superdelegates avalanche Obama's way in the next few days...
Or maybe a post on what the supers do now...
Or maybe something that is, uh, at least interesting.

I would much rather know why I?m voting against a candidate than not knowing why I?m voting for a candidate.
That?s why I know why I?d be voting against McCain hoping he wins, rather than for Obama hoping he won?t.
Nader is looking good right about now.

Got a feeling an exit strategy is being developed... if not tonight, perhaps in the near future. Kind of sad. I love the honest discussion it is driving in the DEM party. Can anyone tell me if BHO said anything about how he would accomplish any of the things he laid out in his speech? All I heard was socialist/populist rhetoric. It is amazing (and I say this as a complement to the working class) that the supposed "uneducated" HRC supporters see right through BHO's phony blather, and the so-called "educated" "college graduates" are too dumb to know he is 1) not electable; 2) doesn't have a snowballs chance in hell of uniting the country and 3) he has never "reached across the aisle" in the past, thus he is unlikely to do it in the future if he was elected. I guess the "uneducated" are always more street smart, thus better at spotting a scam when they see one.

Yes...the fix must be in...unless of course she still ends up winning IN, in that case I am sure the Hillary supporter will accept the results as fair. Might as well get a preemptive srike on the conspiracy theories against Clinton again. Why is it always a "fix" when Hillary is struggling? She ran a poor campaign, as is evident by the multitudes of defections from within her core supporters, the inability to manage money (great economist there) and clearly sleeping past her 3am wake-up call as Obama stormed by her throughout this process. Did you all really want a President who only started working hard when her inevitability was shattered by an underdog who actually decided to work hard from day one? I thought she was the one who would be ready? No one seems to look at her campaign of blunders and hindsight and relate that to her potential results in the White House. How scary would that have been?

LANNY DAVIS: A previous poster said that if the Clintons drop out, that we won't see any more of Carville and Lanny. Hearing Lanny weaseling on NPR back in January convinced me to change my alliegence and donations from Hillary to Obama. Now, watching this brilliant lawyer sucking up to Sean Hannity, it is clear that winning is all that matters, more than personal integrity, professional ethics, or humane politics. The soul has been vacated from the Clintonists' personhood. Winning is all that matters. Hillary Clinton is supposed to win. She is winning. And Hillary Clinton will win.

Clinton's speech tonight sounded like she is bartering with Obama as to how she will gracefully drop out; I'm sure her bid is going to be VPOTUS. When the details are worked out she will finally bow out.

ben, it's okay for a man to cry. just ask james carville. and it's not like you won't have an inside track in an obama white house. okay, you won't have an inside track in an obama white house. but you'll have a nice time getting to know nedrapicler and mayhillfowler in the ladies room.
what also seems clear tonight is the mccain lovefest is officially done. papers who supported the doublemint twins are turning on mccain as we type.

Hillary knows it's over, but she's asking for campaign donations so the campaign can pay her back the "loans" she made to it. How she can expect to run a country when she still can't find records that she was subpoenaed to deliver after 10 years is beyond me.

Well ya know this is really sorta funny. Bill will now move his office out of Harlem and SOONER OR LATER folks are gonna realize that Obama's winning 90+% of the Black vote in EVERY primary is racist in and of itself. Obama won't offer VP to Hillary and Hillary wouldn't accept VP if it was offered - this is a very bad day for the Democratic Party.

Obama is a historically weak candidate; it's strange and funny and sad to see all my (somewhat ungrammatical) Democratic peers so excited by him -- and neat to see people speak about "pulling the party together" while referring to Senator C with an expletive. However passionate we all are, it won't change how easily, quickly, and permanently Obama will be dismembered by the Republicans. But you will have gotten your candidate. Nice going.